Emma has painted prolifically since she was a child. As both her parents are artists, and the environment that she grew up in was the unpredictable, fraught and ‘free’ 1970’s, her experience of creative, visual expression had inexhaustible limitations.

Her interest in art, literature and the human condition, has informed her committed practice. That Emma is the full time mother of two young children, has deepened her inquiry into the relationship of ‘the mother’, the ferocity and parallel tenderness, the seeming immortality within this archetype.

In her practice, she attempts to expose that paradox of longing and fullness within us all; to uncover the voice in the silence of the metaphysical world.

In her first solo exhibition, she re-examined 100’s of personal photographs. In each image, she looked to find the ‘lost’ moment within herself. Was she present at the time the shutter clicked? Or was the photograph a record of a moment by which the conscious knowledge that the visual moment was ‘recorded’ gave her spirit the permission leave, with the understanding that she could see the photograph later?

In these particular photographs, where her ‘presence’ was gone, she then expands the space/time field paradox contained within these images by reconstructing their imagery through overlaying a newly painted surface, re experiencing the day, the moment, the photograph. Taking back into her that particular that was forsaken.

Beyond the location of found images Emma has increasingly used mobile phone technology to newly construct the images she seeks. Combining the instantaneous through the spontaneity of mobile phone photography and the time-based through the deliberateness of oil painting, Emma has managed to develop a practice that simultaneously proposes both the urgency of what must be at all costs conveyed and the silent language with which to express it. She paints with oil paints in the spirit and tone of the old impressionists and attempts to highlight or point out the divinity in our repetitive daily lives.

She never has a person, or people in her work. Her reason is that she believes that ‘we’ are all the same person, in different bodies, and at different stages and experiences of this gift we are given, called Life.

Her work is distinguished by a sense of humanity, longing and honesty and is an attempt to represent the human condition by using symbols and metaphors of the everydayness of the things that we see around us.

She attempts to make the invisible visible and in that to equalize and to translate humanities isolation. With the expression of our equanimity she hopes ultimately comfort the separation constantly present in our human unity.

As much as we might want contemporary art to “mean” something, and do so deliberately, it’s also an aesthetic experience that connects to an irrational, emotional state; that goes beyond language to the experience of seeing.

Emma’s artworks

Interview with Emma De Clario

How do you describe your work to others?What a difficult and interesting question! How can one describe with words accurately a thing that they have made that is a visual expression of an experience?

Trees and sky and whatever that invisible thing is inside them that makes them glow is what I attempt to capture with my paintings, and I will attempt to capture that illusive thing that has no name for the rest of my life, I think.

Do you have a preferred medium?Paint, Gum turps, Linseed oil, Beeswax, Damar and a good brush, I paint on wood rather than canvas, I don’t know why that is, I always have. Something about the weave in the canvas annoys me. I seem to be able to paint with the grain of the wood. When I paint on canvas its as if I am painting against the weave.

How do you begin new work?I empty my thoughts (which is very hard!) and let something else that also doesn’t have a name, do the thinking and wait for the idea to come. Usually it comes to me like a map and its whole and as I read the map it makes sense and fits in together perfectly.

Do you tend to work in series or do you see your body of work as a continuation?We all go through stages in our lives of sorrow, joy, depression, delights, boredom and my work reflects those times.

What attracts you to your subjects?The mirroring of my inner world and outer world at the time of the work.

What processes do you use to bring your ideas to life?To produce a work I give myself time to observe and wait. I then notice the environment around me from a different perspective, and the work seems to come from that silence space between the thinking and the doing.

What do you use as reference material?That’s funny. My partner loves to paint pleine aire for hours and hours and hours on holidays and so I sit beside him and try to myself, and cant. If there’s a tree or a branch or a cloud I cant seem to follow the rule of the truth of the reality and fact of that tree or branch or cloud. I change it or leave it out if I don’t like it.

Do you work intuitively or more consciously?It is most definitely intuitive, the work comes from an emotion I am feeling at the time and the painting paints itself. It’s never planned.

Do you aim to create the finished piece exactly as you envisioned or enjoy allowing it to develop organically?I try to develop a piece as I initially imagined it to be but that never ends up being the case and as the piece is worked on it becomes itself. The trick is, to know when to stop, and being aware of that ‘stopping time’ as I paint.

What’s your favourite colour to work with?Olive green. It is absolutely unbelievable what I true olive green can do to a cloud, a tree and a sky. Olive green is magic.

Where do you create?I create my work in my studio that is in my house; I only recently have moved my studio home so I can paint whenever I feel like it and my children can be a part of that process. A lot of the time my work is produced on the kitchen table.

Do you have a studio ritual to start the session?No, I could never do something so orderly; although there’s a part of me that would love to think that I would meditate, clean my brushes, say a prayer, but no, that’s so not me. My brushes are in a terrible state and the stillness and ritual of meditation continues to elude me.

What’s your favourite music to work to?Radio National. Full stop.

Do you enjoy coming up with titles?Yes, as the painting paints its self, it also titles its self. My titles are a huge part of my work, some artists I know believe the work should speak for itself therefore remained ‘untitled’ for me though the work and the title are the same and one without the other is unfinished

What’s your favourite part of creating?The curiosity of the fact that as things out live people, the wondering of where and how a painting will find it’s various homes.

Have you ever worked with a mentor?No, I don’t…. I have many mentors like moments that come from the most unexpected places. I often think, though, that a relationship with a mentor like the renaissance mentor and apprentice would be an extraordinary relationship to experience.

How do you alleviate the down times? With tears.

What defining moments have you experienced within your practice? One night when my children where very small, they were sleeping and I had a poem or a painting or a song in me that needed to explode…. You know that feeling of middle of the night silence… the world is still and there is a poem in you and you cannot rest or sleep until it is out…I had nothing to paint on, and so I painted on the wooden chopping board in the kitchen and discovered the joy of wood! The knife marks in the chopping board were like a storm… It was so amazing to me… since then I have always painted on wood….

What challenges have you experienced? Many and everything. The complex division between creating something truthfully and with integrity and earning a living. You cannot merge the two. And yet… Art is art food is food money is money… There is THE challenge and the conflict..

You are also an actor and a mother, what is like fulfilling these different roles? They both help each other; I’m better at both because of the other.

Do you find it easy to transition between them or are they all interwoven? It changes daily, sometimes I feel like I’m required to be a hundred different people at once and at other times I am one complex, rational, multifaceted person just like we all are.

What is the most memorable artwork you have seen and why? Rothko. I wept. The color.

If you could ask any artist any question, what would it be?I would ask Pablo Neruda why he had to die so soon before I could meet him and learn anything that he was willing to teach me.

What does the future hold for you?Everything… the rest of my life…?

Continually searching for balance. Working in a way that allows me true expression and that is recognized and responded to by others, from the same point as I’ve created it.

Ideally, it would be a glorious gift to continue to paint and act, and earn a living from them.